Random Stuff, Part 2

Anyone remember this place? Northwest corner of Boston Road and Parker. They used the word “discotheque” in 1966! It had an over-21 side and an underage side.

 

The club was attached to The Oaks, which burned down on New Year’s Eve of 1970. The Flame, which despite its name, was spared in the fire, but didn’t re-open after that fateful night, I believe.

 

Check out this 1895 newspaper account of the “wild man of 16 acres.” The end result was that he convinced the residents of “the sticks,” as Sixteen Acres used to be referred to, that pearls from freshwater clam shells were indeed valuable. Was this just a sad commentary on the gullibility of the yokels from Springfield’s farming suburbs? I think so.

 

Wow, here is a great find: a color photo of the old Pine Tree cabins on Boston Road in Wilbraham, across from the Pizza Pub.

 

When I showed photos of the deplorable state of the cabins in 2013, a couple of years later the granddaughter of the original owner sent me black and white photos of the cabins and the sign back in their heyday.

 

The color photo was taken in 1977, when the peeling paint and the “for sale” sign tells us the place was well on its downward spiral.

 

It differs from the original sign a bit—it had been changed over the years. That ball of lights at the top is a really bizarre touch.

 

While we’re in Wilbraham, down the road a little, a bit past Nine Mile Pond, was Antonio’s a decent Italian restaurant that was in the Boston Road Plaza at least into the mid-1980s. A cosmetology school is there now.

 

And while we’re on the subject of Boston Road, here is a 1966 story of three guys who took a dip in Five Mile Pond in the wee hours. One drove a friend home, but when he came back, the other guy was nowhere to be seen.

 

I think you know how this story ends. Sure enough, it turned out tragically:

 

I went into the history of Abdow’s Big Boy in this 2010 post, but now I’m in search of pictures of the old fiberglass statues. The Boston Road one is seen here in a Facebook photo:

 

The Chicopee one was easy enough to find, thanks to a MassLive “Restaurants of Yesteryear” photo series, in 1988:

 

…and in 1964:

 

Here he is on Riverdale in West Springfield in 1984:

 

Worcester had two Abdow’s Big Boys, including the one pictured in Webster Square:

 An Abdow’s Big Boy in Auburn, MA:

Of course, in a blog post a few years ago I had found a photo of him at our favorite University (then a college) in Sixteen Acres, this guy was a BBOC: a Big Boy on campus. Actually, this special delivery to The Quad, courtesy of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity, took place in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 10, 1979. I assume this was the Cooley Street statue, but this is unconfirmed.

 

The Cooley Street Big Boy was stolen in 1981 by friends of mine from Forest Park, but the hamburger portion of the statue stuck WAY out of the trunk, announcing their caper to the world, and they were soon pulled over. “Big Boy affirmative,” said the cop into the radio receiver, announcing to fellow officers that the search for the kidnappers was over. 

 

There was no newspaper record of the Cooley Street caper, but an online newspaper archive search came up with a Big Boy kidnapping from the East Main Street Abdow’s in Westfield in May of 1982. He ended up on the roof of Westfield High School three miles away.

 

In June of 1986, police caught two men attempting to steal the Big Boy from the Abdow’s on Hazard Avenue in Enfield, CT. When the cops looked in their car, they found a statue of Ronald McDonald in it—taken from the McDonald’s on Enfield Street. They also discovered a stop sign missing from the Enfield Mall lot.

 

Someone in the Growing Up in 16 Acres Facebook group said the statue was once unbolted and left in the middle of Cooley Street, but who knows?

 

There is no telling where the other Big Boy statues are today. When Abdow’s left the national Big Boy franchise in 1994, Ronald and George Abdow removed the fiberglass figures from 18 of their restaurants in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Ronald held onto three of the statues, and the others, in two sizes (“big” and “bigger”?) he was selling for $500 and $1,000 each.

 

Another person in the Acres Facebook group claims to have it in his basement, but requests to post a photo have been ignored. Yet someone else in the group wrote he saw one on the back deck of a junk collector in Monson.

 

A person posted this sighting of the boy in a junkyard in Willimantic, CT: 

 

This guy on Facebook, who paints cars, did some touchups on a Big Boy in Eastford, CT for a private collector:

 

BOY would that look good in MY basement. Does anyone know of any Big Boy statues around here—or any photos of  him now or then? Send me an email at hellsacres@gmail.com.

 

Kelly Reardon, my only reason for watching WWLP-TV 22 News, has left for greener pastures? Say it ain’t so!

 

Big Boy certainly isn’t happy with this rumor.

 

 

I’m afraid it is, Big Boy. She announced back in February that she’s leaving the station.

 

 

And she’s moving to Florida.

 

 

But don’t worry. She’s going to provide national forecasts on Fox Weather. So you can watch her on YouTube TV.

 

 

Here’s one mystery that I pretty much solved while looking around on Facebook. I had wondered in my last blog post about Cedarhust Pool in Southampton, and whether people still swim there, even though it’s not advertised to the public.

 

Apparently, it’s fed and filled by an artesian well. When I came upon the above photo I assumed it might have been drained for good, but someone posted that owner Janet Brown still fills it, but there is no swimming allowed there. Bummer, but at least it’s still a scenic body of water.

 

Here’s another mystery: Hell’s Acres reader Dan Genovese sent in some interesting YouTube links of Boston performing several songs in what looks like the Springfield Civic Center. He remembers the band being filmed at the show from November of 1978, when Sammy Hagar opened. “I had floor seats and remember during the Hagar show the camera guy getting pissed at me for flipping off the camera,” he wrote. 

 

Here’s “Don’t Look Back.”

“At the very end of the video I honestly believe that is me getting up on the seat in my flannel jacket, and I also believe I see my buddy that went to the show with me,” he wrote. “I’ve been searching for this video for years and saw these years ago but very grainy but last year these cleaner versions were released. One site did confirm this as Springfield but can't re-find that site.”

 

Here’s “Party” and “A Man I’ll Never Be.”

 

 

Was this in the Civic Center? Readers, what do you think? There are some arena camera shots that are pretty convincing, including the appearance that there is no balcony, which fits one of the Civic Center’s defining characteristics.

This view of the stage looks a lot like the vantage point from the Civic Center walkway railing on the right. Here is a screen shot of it from “Don't Look Back” compared to a black and white photo taken from what could be nearly the same area before a 1977 Grateful Dead show at the Civic Center:

 

Genovese was (and still is) a talented baseball player and writer who is a member of the Western Massachusetts Baseball Hall of Fame and has written several baseball books. 

Check out the leg lamp from A Christmas Story at the annual Festival of Trees in the MassMutual Center last December. You can bet your bottom dollar I put in a raffle ticket for the corresponding tree! Unfortunately, I didn’t win the “major award,” so there was no “soft glow of electric sex” gleaming in our window last winter.

See you in August. Like my Facebook page!